After hearing about Lulu through Erika Dreifus I couldn’t help but browse around the site. What I discovered was a treasure trove of self-published and publish-on-demand books, calendars, and music. There is everything from Matt Raible’s Spring Live published by SourceBeat to Herman the Homeless Hermit Crab by Scott Fisk, an awesome little childrens book available in paperback for $7.99 and in PDF form for less than a buck
Seeing this broad range of quality professional content, sometimes priced quite affordably in ebook form, I couldn’t help but think that this is the next direction the blogosphere might take. It makes perfect sense if you think about it. There are so many talented yet rather obscure writers on the web out there that know a whole heck of a lot about what they write about.
If every domain expert (or every average joe who knows a good bit about a topic) out there were to publish something and make it available in print or PDF at a reasonable price, we might just have something. The Long Tail goes on and on.